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Posted to community@apache.org by Brian Behlendorf <br...@collab.net> on 2004/10/08 22:55:37 UTC
Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Use www.bugmenot.com if you need a password.
Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
the situation?
Brian
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 14:09:41 -0400
From: Greg Wilson <gv...@cs.toronto.edu>
To: brian@collab.net
Subject: Open Source, Cold Shoulder
Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that an article Michelle
Levesque and I wrote about why so few women get involved in open source
computing, and what that reveals about open source's weaknesses, is now
on-line at:
http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdm0411b/
You may have to register to view it, but registration is free.
Thanks,
Greg Wilson
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen <hp...@intermeta.de>.
On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 00:25, Henri Yandell wrote:
[...]
> * The domination of Apple laptops at open-source conventions shows the
> adoration with which FLOSS developers have greeted Apple's user interface.
> In fact, I think we represent the only new market for Apple' computers
> recently.
Nah. I beg to differ. IMHO the main reason for the startling number of
Apple Laptops between "Power Users" (at least this is the reason why I
consider getting a Powerbook) is, that this is the only Unix-based,
main-stream system that offers you a wide range of professional end-user
applications on top of Unix. The reason for the acceptance is
vendor-support, not "UI slickness". Hell, I sticked with fvwm2 till
middle this year and I still miss a few of its features with Gnome. For
day to day work, I need a bash window or two. And emacs. :-)
And you can run an Unix based application (e.g. for a presentation)
_and_ Powerpoint on one computer. Can't do this with Linux. Can't do
this with Windows.
Laptop support for Linux still sucks. A Powerbook runs all day without
having to recharge. My trusty Toshiba Satellite cleans out its batteries
within two hours under Linux and 3 1/2 hours under Windows.
Yes, you can get OpenOffice and Gimp for Linux. I don't care. I want
Photoshop and Microsoft Office. And Games... :-)
* Python/Apache are terrible projects to look at. These are established
> communities towards the core of coding (not as deep as Linux, but close).
> Instead start looking at a higher level at open community projects
> concerning things that affect non-coders.
IMHO these are "technogeek" communities. Not intended for end users.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
RedHat Certified Engineer -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
Linux, Java, perl, Solaris -- Consulting, Training, Development
"Fighting for one's political stand is an honorable action, but re-
fusing to acknowledge that there might be weaknesses in one's
position - in order to identify them so that they can be remedied -
is a large enough problem with the Open Source movement that it
deserves to be on this list of the top five problems."
--Michelle Levesque, "Fundamental Issues with
Open Source Software Development"
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Yoav Shapira <yo...@apache.org>.
Hi,
I understand that I generalized the Tomcat community to the entire FLOSS one,
and that may be invalid. But I still don't think the article is that valid:
most of us have fairly strong personalities, and I think a woman with one could
(and have) joined in.
The situation might even be better than the amusing living-together comparison
below, because no committer (to ASF or other communities) has to live with or
even like others. They just have to make good contributions and respect the
rules of the community. At least for the ASF, I don't see any sexist rules.
As to the playboy.com mirror: yeah, I see how that could be offensive, and
although I wasn't privy to the original mirrors discussion, I see we have a
bunch of mirrors so removing just that one shouldn't have any major impact.
Sites like linuxchix.org are great, and I would bet their numbers/membership
are increasing. I doubt the percentage of women of the overall committers to
FLOSS is increasing, but that's largely because the number of FLOSS
projects/committers is exploding, and there's no way the rate can keep up. If
the FLOSS community ever reaches a more steady state, I think the rate of women
participants will have a chance to go up. There are at least two recent
precedents for this, in both the online gaming arena (e.g.
http://www.gamesfirst.com/articles/releases/women_gaming.htm) where women are
now a majority, and in car maintenance/customization/aftermarket (e.g.
http://doityourself.com/autobuysell/afterthought.htm).
So the article might be interesting, but I still don't think it merits an
official response. I wonder if it's a result of today's unfortunate
public-or-perish academic culture, where lower-level or non-tenured academic
professionals must continute to publish at a good pace, and the number of
publications and references to publications by an author is a (sometimes the)
key to his or her promotion.
Yoav
--- Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 09 October 2004 16:00, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>
> > Imagine living in a house where teh ASF board members lived together.
> >
> > [mental image of stefano running out of the house screaming]
> >
> > Look at us. Yeah, us, alpha geeks!
> >
> > A little flowers on the table might not be enough to get the alpha
> > geek-ness go away, but, know what?, it's not the result (which is going
> > to be pathetic anyway, and they know that already), it's the effort!
>
> Amen!!!
>
> Lingo, attitude and 'geekness' is not the strong sides of this community to
> attract, not only women, but people who are not entirely stereotype molded,
> who are somewhat different and can add spice to our boring lives.
>
> Now, there ARE people in ASF who are different, but are they enough and given
>
> enough room here, and is the environment in any way hindering the process of
> growing the social structure... Yes, the social structure!
>
> Cheers
> Niclas
> --
> +------//-------------------+
> / http://www.bali.ac /
> / http://niclas.hedhman.org /
> +------//-------------------+
>
>
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Saturday 09 October 2004 16:00, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> Imagine living in a house where teh ASF board members lived together.
>
> [mental image of stefano running out of the house screaming]
>
> Look at us. Yeah, us, alpha geeks!
>
> A little flowers on the table might not be enough to get the alpha
> geek-ness go away, but, know what?, it's not the result (which is going
> to be pathetic anyway, and they know that already), it's the effort!
Amen!!!
Lingo, attitude and 'geekness' is not the strong sides of this community to
attract, not only women, but people who are not entirely stereotype molded,
who are somewhat different and can add spice to our boring lives.
Now, there ARE people in ASF who are different, but are they enough and given
enough room here, and is the environment in any way hindering the process of
growing the social structure... Yes, the social structure!
Cheers
Niclas
--
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/ http://www.bali.ac /
/ http://niclas.hedhman.org /
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Steven Noels <st...@outerthought.org>.
On 09 Oct 2004, at 10:00, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
>
>> Henri Yandell wrote:
>>> I'm really not very impressed with the article.
>> case in point?
>
> What I mean by that is, look at us, read our style in replying. We
> like to be slick and sharp, and sometimes email is a form of
> word-based chess playing made with quotes and (smart) elisions.
Definitely.
Look at the "outside world".
Both my wife and I are, for diverse reasons, constantly in touch with
other people - for our job and other purposes. Most of the time
however, I'll do that from behind my laptop. She ends up being on the
phone - a lot - primarily for professional conversations. She doesn't
like email for anything but short, functional notes - and I doubt she
would ever enjoy extracting or putting information into mailing list
threads.
Also, when I use the phone for anything but functional purposes ("I'm
late" or "I'm lost"), that's mostly when I'm doing something else, like
driving the car, cooking, having a cigaret break. When she rings
someone up, the telephone conversation will get her full attention.
I think that the few women in CS and OSS somehow gave up and adjusted
to our way of communication - which is a pity. OTOH, it's fairly heard
to scale IRL or phone-based communication the way email can scale.
</Steven>
--
Steven Noels http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source Java & XML An Orixo Member
Read my weblog at http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/
stevenn at outerthought.org stevenn at apache.org
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen <hp...@intermeta.de>.
On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 10:00, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> Who's up for a D&D game? [sound of stefano scratching ass]
On that topic: @ ApacheCon anyone? ;-)
Regards
Henning (Half-Orc, 9th level. My co-players think that
it really fits me well. ;-) )
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
RedHat Certified Engineer -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
Linux, Java, perl, Solaris -- Consulting, Training, Development
"Fighting for one's political stand is an honorable action, but re-
fusing to acknowledge that there might be weaknesses in one's
position - in order to identify them so that they can be remedied -
is a large enough problem with the Open Source movement that it
deserves to be on this list of the top five problems."
--Michelle Levesque, "Fundamental Issues with
Open Source Software Development"
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> Henri Yandell wrote:
>
>> I'm really not very impressed with the article.
>
> case in point?
What I mean by that is, look at us, read our style in replying. We like
to be slick and sharp, and sometimes email is a form of word-based chess
playing made with quotes and (smart) elisions.
I looked at LinuxChix.org and, I have to say, seeing all those women
ranked and doing some job I think to myself: what a nicer place the ASF
will be with some women in the house.
I lived with male roomates before and other friends' too: it's just not
as good (I live only with roommates from both sexes, if gay even
better). It's not about doing the dishes, or about having to take a look
at them when they got out of the shower or things like that, is the
little touch, the vibe of mutual yet resonating differences in how we
perceive reality and how that shapes the environment in a better way.
why don't women come in? for the same reason why girls put "girls-only"
on craigslist. A women in an established full-man house will just feel
out of place.
Oh, yeah, smarty pants, if you read FLOSS it's just about crap? scratch
taht surface a little, would you?
Now, re-read that sentence.
I know Ben can take it. He will probably smile at it. He will probably
like me even more after that.
Now, imagine the author of that paper reading Ben's comment. Will she
take it like that? Sure she doesn't know Ben, she doesn't understand
that if he does not say something bad, it means he felt it was "good
enough". Silence is probably the best complient you can get from him.
Imagine living in a house where teh ASF board members lived together.
[mental image of stefano running out of the house screaming]
Look at us. Yeah, us, alpha geeks!
A little flowers on the table might not be enough to get the alpha
geek-ness go away, but, know what?, it's not the result (which is going
to be pathetic anyway, and they know that already), it's the effort!
I really strongly hope that efforts like linuxchix.org take off... in a
few years, *we* might be using female aliases to go overthere and be
able to start questions without having to spend a few months ahead of
time to know enough not to look like idiots (or using the "violent tone"
just to mask our knowledge lacks with arrogance).
Or maybe, I'm all wrong. And it's their fault. And we are cool and they
are a bunch of losers. So let's go back and play. Where were we? Who's
up for a D&D game? [sound of stefano scratching ass]
--
Stefano.
Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
Henri Yandell wrote:
> I'm really not very impressed with the article.
case in point?
--
Stefano.
Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Henri Yandell <ba...@generationjava.com>.
I'm really not very impressed with the article.
The gender issue just confuses things and they provide a perfectly
rational reason for why the gender difference exists (in the same way that
there's an age, nationality, education level, career-path bias to
open-source). The only solution is more female coders, and it will happen.
As an aside, I wonder what the ratio of female coders between large
corporates and small corporates is compared to the male ratio. I bet
female coders are largely at the big corporates rather than the small, and
ignoring a few exceptions, big corporates are not likely environments for
open-source as they become so insular.
If we remove the gender parts of this article, we basically get something
that says that open-source coding will not succeed if it continues to be a
group of coders doing things that interest coders. ie) in their eyes the
same number of open-source coders should be working on mythtv as are
working on linux or eclipse, because each product is equally important. In
fact, mythtv should be more important than eclipse as there are far more
potential PVR customers than developers out there.
This is completely true. If we were a large company pondering our product
plan, we'd agree that bringing out a games console is a better move than
trying to improve our developer IDE in terms of simple profit margin. But
we're not. We're a community working on the things that interest our
community.
The open-source coding community leads the way in showing how communities
can group together, especially using the Internet as a backbone, to solve
problems that normally would require a large corporate and a subscription
model, but it isn't a development team to work on all the world's
problems. There are other communities (which definitely overlap the
open-source coding community) to do that.
In the end, I think the only thing that will hurt us is if the people who
shape the future of computing stop being those who are most interested in
computing. The only way that seems likely to happen are a) if computing
becomes easy, and then we're all out of a job, or b) governments/lawyers
decide to decide the future.
(The success of open-source coding on b) is very impressive thanks to the
wonderful legal work of the FSF. )
--
Some directed notes:
* The domination of Apple laptops at open-source conventions shows the
adoration with which FLOSS developers have greeted Apple's user interface.
In fact, I think we represent the only new market for Apple' computers
recently.
* Python/Apache are terrible projects to look at. These are established
communities towards the core of coding (not as deep as Linux, but close).
Instead start looking at a higher level at open community projects
concerning things that affect non-coders.
Sorry for the spam, but you asked and it's Friday evening at 6pm :)
Killing time while the rush-hour dies.
Hen
On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>
> Use www.bugmenot.com if you need a password.
>
> Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address the
> situation?
>
> Brian
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 14:09:41 -0400
> From: Greg Wilson <gv...@cs.toronto.edu>
> To: brian@collab.net
> Subject: Open Source, Cold Shoulder
>
> Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that an article Michelle
> Levesque and I wrote about why so few women get involved in open source
> computing, and what that reveals about open source's weaknesses, is now
> on-line at:
>
> http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdm0411b/
>
> You may have to register to view it, but registration is free.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg Wilson
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: community-unsubscribe@apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: community-help@apache.org
>
>
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
>
>> Conclusion? Just play nice.
>
>
> Right on! It's amazing how well a bit of humility, encouragement of
> others, and responding to fire with ice works in online communities -
> whether technical like this one, or social, or whatever.
>
> I'm haunted, though, by whether there's a sort of cognitive dissonance
> in "being nice" and the "Apache" name. I'm not suggesting we rename
> ourselves the "Cute Nice Fluffy Bunnies Software Foundation". :) Just
> wondering if it's something we should overtly work to overcome rather
> than just inertly hope we aren't setting the wrong tone...
Let me remind of when Marc Fleury of JBoss once named us "the fat ladies
drinking tea" while he named the JBoss people "the knights fighting the
big evil corporations".
How many girls does JBoss has?
--
Stefano.
Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Martin van den Bemt <ma...@mvdb.net>.
On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 04:56, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> I'm haunted, though, by whether there's a sort of cognitive dissonance in
> "being nice" and the "Apache" name. I'm not suggesting we rename
> ourselves the "Cute Nice Fluffy Bunnies Software Foundation". :) Just
> wondering if it's something we should overtly work to overcome rather than
> just inertly hope we aren't setting the wrong tone...
Our logo is good : a soft feather :)
Mvgr,
Martin
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 10:56, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> I'm not suggesting we rename
> ourselves the "Cute Nice Fluffy Bunnies Software Foundation".
ROTFL... From a feared native-american tribe to cuddly... :o)
My vote goes for
The Bambi Software Foundation
or
The Kitten Software Foundation
Cheers
Niclas
--
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/ http://niclas.hedhman.org /
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Brian Behlendorf <br...@collab.net>.
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
> Conclusion? Just play nice.
Right on! It's amazing how well a bit of humility, encouragement of
others, and responding to fire with ice works in online communities -
whether technical like this one, or social, or whatever.
I'm haunted, though, by whether there's a sort of cognitive dissonance in
"being nice" and the "Apache" name. I'm not suggesting we rename
ourselves the "Cute Nice Fluffy Bunnies Software Foundation". :) Just
wondering if it's something we should overtly work to overcome rather than
just inertly hope we aren't setting the wrong tone...
Brian
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen <hp...@intermeta.de>.
On Tue, 2004-10-19 at 22:32, Julie MacNaught wrote:
Hi,
[...]
> I've been accused of being a geek, however, in my defense, I always say:
> "you think I'M a geek, you should meet my friends at Apache.".
[...]
Wow. Define "being normal" by pointing at people that are even weirder.
I never thought of that. Seems I'm a member of the latter group. ;-)
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
RedHat Certified Engineer -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
Linux, Java, perl, Solaris -- Consulting, Training, Development
"Fighting for one's political stand is an honorable action, but re-
fusing to acknowledge that there might be weaknesses in one's
position - in order to identify them so that they can be remedied -
is a large enough problem with the Open Source movement that it
deserves to be on this list of the top five problems."
--Michelle Levesque, "Fundamental Issues with
Open Source Software Development"
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Henri Yandell <ba...@generationjava.com>.
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Bill Stoddard wrote:
> Henri Yandell wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
>>
>>> I am a big corporation's employee (IBM), not an individual contributor.
>>
>>
>> My current pet theory is that due to quotas,
>
> Dang, so much for sensitivity and respect...
Took me 10 minutes of head scratching to even see what Bill meant by this.
I assume it's that somehow I'm insulting women by suggesting that larger
corporations have a higher ratio of women and that quotas are a part of
this. I can't see the insult myself so apologies to any women or men who
feel aggrieved.
Hen
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Bill Stoddard <bi...@wstoddard.com>.
Bill Stoddard wrote:
> Henri Yandell wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
>>
>>> I am a big corporation's employee (IBM), not an individual contributor.
>>
>>
>>
>> My current pet theory is that due to quotas,
>
>
> Dang, so much for sensitivity and respect...
>
> Bill
Henri, your email could be interpreted in an unfavorable way but I know you had no ill intent and I should
have added a :-) to my comment. :-)
soap box:
No one wants to be thought of as 'a quota'. The US policy of Affirmative Action is often called a "quota
system" by people who are against it. AA would be a quota system only if one assumes that there are no members
of a so called "protected class" (women, some racial minorities, etc) that are capable of doing the job. The
fact is, there are lots of really talented folks that are members of 'protected classes' and companies like
IBM aggressively recruit strong talent wherever they find it. Rightly so imho. My personal opinion (based
solely on my experiences inside a big US multinational company) is that AA has about outlived its usefulness.
No sane recruiter ignores talent based on gender, sexual preference or race and those that do deserve what's
coming to them (failure in the marketplace).
Julie, Thanks for your post. I think your observation is spot on. Women are, on average, not as assertive as
men in mixed company. Communicating via a mailing list 'hangs you out there' so to speak on the assertiveness
scale. I know in my early days in the Apache HTTP Server community, I had my head handed to me on a platter
on a couple of occasions (by someone whose opinion I trust and respect, fwiw). That's a pretty typical
experience I expect. Those types of experiences tend to filter communities for a certain set of personality
traits; being averse to confrontation is not one of the traits folks in the Apache HTTP Server community tend
to have, for better or worse. :-)
Bill
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Bill Stoddard <bi...@wstoddard.com>.
Henri Yandell wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
>
>> I am a big corporation's employee (IBM), not an individual contributor.
>
>
> My current pet theory is that due to quotas,
Dang, so much for sensitivity and respect...
Bill
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Henri Yandell <ba...@generationjava.com>.
On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Julie MacNaught wrote:
> I am a big corporation's employee (IBM), not an individual contributor.
My current pet theory is that due to quotas, the large corporations are
gobbling up all the female graduates. Apart from the ASF ties to IBM/Sun,
and obvious open-source corporates (IBM, Novell, Red Hat etc), most
open-source committers come from smaller companies. This is a completely
unproven belief I admit. A survey a few years back showed 50% ASF at
IBM/Sun and 50% elsewhere, but I'm not sure if it looked at the size of
the elsewheres.
I think it would be interesting to look at the gender ratio of where
graduates go in terms of size of company, and then look at the ratio of
where open-source committers work.
Hen
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd): One woman's comments
Posted by Julie MacNaught <jm...@apache.org>.
I'm an ASF committer (WSRP4J) and PMC member (portals, webservices), and
I'm female.
I've never tried to hide it, although the thought crossed my mind.
I've often wondered why there aren't more women around here, but I'm
used to it. At least I don't have to wait in line for the bathroom at
conferences.
I am a big corporation's employee (IBM), not an individual contributor.
I've been accused of being a geek, however, in my defense, I always say:
"you think I'M a geek, you should meet my friends at Apache.".
Seriously, the article does make some good points. I think there is some
merit to the suggestion that women are less likely to spend their free
time hacking on the computer at home, and they don't come from the
gaming culture.
However, I would like to offer my own theory as to why women are not as
active in Open Source communities as they are in other computer science
jobs. My theory has to do with women's aversion to speaking up in
public, which is an essential aspect of open source participation. It's
been documented (don't ask me when or where) that in a meeting with both
men and women, the men will speak up and the women will not (obviously
there are always exceptions). If the room only contains women, the
women will speak up. This is also relevant to classroom participation
among girls in school. I think this may have to do with a fear of
ridicule, but I'm no expert.
I think that treating everyone with respect is the key to encouraging
participation among all population groups. Noone, male or female,
should ever be ridiculed or humiliated in public, on a mailing list, no
matter how stupid or ridiculous the post (including this one :-)).
It's been my experience that this is generally the case. Off topic
posts or seemingly stupid questions, are usually handled patiently.
However, I have also seen some unecessary and unfortunate remarks made
on mailing lists. My observation has been that this occurs between folks
who have some history together. Nevertheless, a new person might get
the impression that they will be subjected to similar unpleasantness if
they post, and may well choose to merely lurk. You have to have a pretty
thick skin to jump into the fray.
Conclusion? Just play nice.
Respectfully,
Julie MacNaught
jmacna@apache.org
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>
> Use www.bugmenot.com if you need a password.
>
> Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
> the situation?
>
> Brian
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 14:09:41 -0400
> From: Greg Wilson <gv...@cs.toronto.edu>
> To: brian@collab.net
> Subject: Open Source, Cold Shoulder
>
> Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that an article Michelle
> Levesque and I wrote about why so few women get involved in open source
> computing, and what that reveals about open source's weaknesses, is now
> on-line at:
>
> http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdm0411b/
>
> You may have to register to view it, but registration is free.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg Wilson
>
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>
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Saturday 09 October 2004 13:11, Ben Laurie wrote:
> Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> > Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
> > the situation?
>
> Try to encourage sensible writing?
>
> I mean, it'd be cool if there were more women in open source, but the
> whole idea that open source should rely less on clue and stop being
> about writing code is just completely dim.
Ok Girls!!! Speak up! How do you feel about being part of the ASF community?
Have you ever been victims of sexism here or in other projects?
Cheers
Niclas
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen <hp...@intermeta.de>.
On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 13:58, Santiago Gala wrote:
> FLOSS is an acronym mostly used by the "politically correct" people. If
> you look at the term, is is completely inclusive, trying to avoid
> pissing anybody.
Yep. www.floss.com is also pretty heavy stuff... ;-)
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
RedHat Certified Engineer -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
Linux, Java, perl, Solaris -- Consulting, Training, Development
"Fighting for one's political stand is an honorable action, but re-
fusing to acknowledge that there might be weaknesses in one's
position - in order to identify them so that they can be remedied -
is a large enough problem with the Open Source movement that it
deserves to be on this list of the top five problems."
--Michelle Levesque, "Fundamental Issues with
Open Source Software Development"
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Santiago Gala <sg...@hisitech.com>.
El sáb, 09-10-2004 a las 06:11 +0100, Ben Laurie escribió:
> Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> > Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
> > the situation?
>
> Try to encourage sensible writing?
>
> I mean, it'd be cool if there were more women in open source, but the
> whole idea that open source should rely less on clue and stop being
> about writing code is just completely dim.
>
> BTW, isn't it amusing that as soon as you see "FLOSS" you can be 99%
> sure that what follows is going to be clueless or irrelevant? Or
> probably both.
>
FLOSS is an acronym mostly used by the "politically correct" people. If
you look at the term, is is completely inclusive, trying to avoid
pissing anybody.
> BTW, supporting this whole argument with a discussion about women in
> computer science is even more daft. Their own quote sums it up:
> "Computer science is no more related to the computer than astronomy is
> related to the telescope". Well, wake up and smell the coffee, boys and
> girls, open source is _all about_ computers.
>
It could be a problem with non-English speaking. Typical "Computer
Science" term in Spanish is "Informática", from French "Informatique",
implying more IT (Information Technologies) meaning.
While Apache has always been close to the algorithms and protocols, we
are having more "social" information activity lately, and I can't avoid
seeing it happening more in the future.
Women tends to thrive more when they see the social component.
Disclaimer: though "All generalizations are false" is a "contradictio in
terminis", being itself a generalization, it is close enough to be true.
Regards
Santiago
--
Santiago Gala <sg...@hisitech.com>
High Sierra Technology, SLU
Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Ben Laurie <be...@algroup.co.uk>.
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
> the situation?
Try to encourage sensible writing?
I mean, it'd be cool if there were more women in open source, but the
whole idea that open source should rely less on clue and stop being
about writing code is just completely dim.
BTW, isn't it amusing that as soon as you see "FLOSS" you can be 99%
sure that what follows is going to be clueless or irrelevant? Or
probably both.
BTW, supporting this whole argument with a discussion about women in
computer science is even more daft. Their own quote sums it up:
"Computer science is no more related to the computer than astronomy is
related to the telescope". Well, wake up and smell the coffee, boys and
girls, open source is _all about_ computers.
Cheers,
Ben.
--
ApacheCon! 13-17 November! http://www.apachecon.com/
http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/
"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Brian Behlendorf <br...@collab.net>.
On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> On Wednesday 13 October 2004 16:44, Henning Schmiedehausen wrote:
>
>> In the end, the majority of the 99% must adjust to the 1% of idiots.
>
> Hmmm.... At a 2 magnitude superiority in manpower, the majority is unable to
> keep them in check, and weed them out? Is that a matter of lack of tools, or
> doesn't the majority care?
You can weed them out... but they can come back too, under a different
name. The Apache wiki defacement was done by spammers and by one person
who just wanted to see the goatse picture... but all anonymous save for an
IP address. Defacement and repair is tolerable when we're talking about
text content, whether it's our documentation or Wikipedia; but it's not
tolerable when we're talking about code, despite the peer review that
commits (usually) get.
But, I am really interested in seeing you run an experiment on this, and
watch how well it scales. And if there's things we could do to improve
our own processes and tools - like modifying Subversion in some way to
allow for open branching so that submitted patches are a part of the
system rather than passed around as deltas in the bug database or on the
mailing lists.
But let's talk more about it here as you start seeing results....
Brian
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Wednesday 13 October 2004 16:44, Henning Schmiedehausen wrote:
> In the end, the majority of the 99% must adjust to the 1% of idiots.
Hmmm.... At a 2 magnitude superiority in manpower, the majority is unable to
keep them in check, and weed them out? Is that a matter of lack of tools, or
doesn't the majority care?
You mention grafitti as an example; The punks can do it undetected + it is
more effort to remove than put up. Would they bother if it is fixed by the
press of a button, when 'anyone' sees it (i.e. good tools)?
Well, maybe I am living in a dream world and there are more idiots out there
than I think. Maybe you shouldn't tell me, I might get a trauma from getting
out of my disillusion.
> But please, stop talking about things that you obviously have never
> tried out or at least not tried out on a marginally successful project.
I am amazed at your logic :o), I truly am.
But asking me to stop questioning the status quo, what is the purpose of that?
Cheers
Niclas
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Henning Schmiedehausen <hp...@intermeta.de>.
On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 19:21, Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 October 2004 21:02, Ben Hyde wrote:
>
> > Projects that: fail to
> > welcome new comers; fail to bring in credible new contributors ... well
> > they are just stupid. They will ultimately become dysfunctional and
> > implode.
>
> Question; Should Open Source be Open Participation?
>
> I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that hordes
> of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will dust of
> the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because *most*
> people *want* it to work.
But the few that don't will spoil the show. We had our share of Wiki
defacement. With a wiki, that is easily corrected because all pages are
in _one_ place. If you have code defacement (consider a malicious third
party put a backdoor into the httpd stable branch) and anyone checks out
code from the CVS with this backdoor, your project reputation is toast
(/. reports a that a backdoor in widely distributed web server has been
found. Film at eleven).
>
> Can it work on code? _I_ am absolutely certain, but I never expect that the
Sorry Niclas, but in the last few weeks I've read quite a number of
postings of you on the Avalon and general apache lists, that suggest
that you either live in a dream world where everyone is everyone elses'
friend or that you have no clue what you are talking about
In the real world, there are probably ~99% of the people that are
interested in working constructively together. But the last remaining
percent is enough to put grafitti all over the walls in any bigger city
(probably in Sweden too), burn holes in the seats on the subway and
litter the streets. In the end, the majority of the 99% must adjust to
the 1% of idiots.
It is the same thing with the internet. On a wiki, where defacement and
pranks are easily repaired, the majority might be able to tolerate the
annoying people on the net. With a code repository where everyone can
get a cheap copy and redistribute it: No way, Jose.
This is a meritocracy, not a democracy. Prove me that you know what you
are doing, earn trust and you will get more power.
> hard-earned ranks of the upper-tier in ASF to willingly relinguish the
> 'military style rankings' that makes up ASF and most other OSS projects.
>
> Future will tell, but I am putting my money on Open Participation Software
> (OPS) where everyone is welcome to join in, not barriers of entry and
> "militarism" of promotions. ;o)
It seems to me that you have no idea how a larger organization should be
structured. And the ASF with 800+ committers is such a "larger
organization".
There have been lots of experiments in the dot-com bubble startups with
"non-hierarchical structures" "community concensus" and "self
management". In the end, those companies survived that have modeled
themselves after the good old "executive, middle-management, workers"
model what has been proven to work in the last few centuries.
Because the others couldn't even agree who should wash the cups after a
meeting and had to hire a consultant for this.
IMHO you should reflect on:
"Now I am a firm believer in democracy, but I also believe that there
are some fields of human activity in which a count of noses does not
provide the best basis for law and order." (Theodore M. Bernstein: The
Careful Writer)
But please, stop talking about things that you obviously have never
tried out or at least not tried out on a marginally successful project.
That your ideas work for the obscure project with a few developers and a
community where everyone knows everyone else: Sure.
Would it work for Tomcat, httpd or even a mid-size project like
Avalon/Merlin/Excalibur: Surely not.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
RedHat Certified Engineer -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
Linux, Java, perl, Solaris -- Consulting, Training, Development
"Fighting for one's political stand is an honorable action, but re-
fusing to acknowledge that there might be weaknesses in one's
position - in order to identify them so that they can be remedied -
is a large enough problem with the Open Source movement that it
deserves to be on this list of the top five problems."
--Michelle Levesque, "Fundamental Issues with
Open Source Software Development"
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <ju...@erenkrantz.com>.
--On Tuesday, October 12, 2004 9:34 PM +0200 Santiago Gala
<sg...@hisitech.com> wrote:
> You can separate both functions, i.e. development or patching and code
> review/quality control. The linux kernel is beginning to be a good
> example, where you have:
> - Linus (vanilla) tree as a reference value (think Fed Reserve)
> - Andrew Morton (mm) patches, making it a higher risk (think Dow Jones)
> - Full preemption and other special or highly experimental patches
> (think Nasdaq or even Hedge Funds)
> - Hardware manufacturers trying to get their code in, to get more wide
> support for their hardware.
> - Other people suggesting improvements around (I've sent three typos
> recently) just because they don't want to maintain their needed pieces.
The Linux kernel is a great process example if you aren't trying to actually
cooperate in the development process or build a *real* brand. Linus views
RedHat, Debian, Mandrake, etc. as the ones who are responsible for dealing
with users. It's also a very ego-centric model - perhaps some developers like
that. I don't care for it at all. -- justin
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Santiago Gala <sg...@hisitech.com>.
El mar, 12-10-2004 a las 10:50 -0700, Justin Erenkrantz escribió:
> --On Wednesday, October 13, 2004 1:21 AM +0800 Niclas Hedhman
> <ni...@hedhman.org> wrote:
>
> > I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that hordes
> > of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will dust of
> > the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because *most*
> > people *want* it to work.
>
> Baloney. Code review is *essential*. For httpd, we require *three* people to
> sign off on any change before it gets merged into the stable branch. We take
> our responsibility for providing stable software *extremely* seriously. We're
> not about to deploy untested (and unreviewed) fixes to the general population.
> It would not bode well on our personal reputations or of our software's.
> Therefore, we're also extremely cautious about adding new committers.
>
> Furthermore, for example, lots of people suggest patches to httpd. They think
> their patch is right. But, more often then not, their patches are incorrect
> because they aren't as familiar with the code as the committers are. If you
> turned the httpd repository into a wiki-style free-for-all, it would be an
> extreme uphill battle to keep the code clean because it would turn into
> anarchy. The current committers won't be able to keep up and the code would
> degenerate as everyone throws in what they think is right without having any
> mandatory review process in place.
>
> An ex post facto review process (CTR) isn't always acceptable for
> production-grade software because the reality is that real people can't keep
> up with a high volume! CTR works well only when you have a stable core of
> people whom you trust - as httpd does for its unstable branch, but even then
> we still use RTC for our stable branches because we want to be
> as-certain-as-we-humans-can-be that our fixes are right before we merge them
> into stable.
>
You can separate both functions, i.e. development or patching and code
review/quality control. The linux kernel is beginning to be a good
example, where you have:
- Linus (vanilla) tree as a reference value (think Fed Reserve)
- Andrew Morton (mm) patches, making it a higher risk (think Dow Jones)
- Full preemption and other special or highly experimental patches
(think Nasdaq or even Hedge Funds)
- Hardware manufacturers trying to get their code in, to get more wide
support for their hardware.
- Other people suggesting improvements around (I've sent three typos
recently) just because they don't want to maintain their needed pieces.
Redhat, Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Gentoo, etc. all fish in the stock
market, providing que QA you meant, (like the big investment banks,
BTW). In some senses, the linux kernel is becoming a very large stock
exchange, and it requires two different abilities: the ability to
recognise good patches from bad ones, and the ability to convince and be
a good leader.
If you look at lkml.org it is fascinating to see how the market is at
work. On top of this list you have the different distros lists and
channels.
The position of Linus requires him to play a very subtle balance between
all the "exchange" members. Other players can be more peripheral but
strong (see Ben H. for the PPC kernel, or Rusty Russell for the network
code...)
> I believe the quality of the code base is in direct proportion to the effort
> required to get commit bits and what it takes to get a change in. There are
> projects here in ASF-land that don't care at all about actual users and are
> willing to leave them in the lurch due to petty political battles. That's not
> the spirit of open source I care about or want the ASF to support. -- justin
IOW, if some people wants to use apache code as a base and start
delivering patched versions (mostly like vanilla + patches in the kernel
case), they can use the repository and/or patches in the lists and issue
system with no problem.
The fact that the kernel bazaar is so dynamic is explained out of raw
size, high modularity and variation of architecture and function, from
handhelds and solid state wireless routers to highly multiprocessor NUMA
machines. Yesterday I sent a fix (1) which worked for me, just corrected
from one (2) which I imagine worked in the SMP #ifdef, but not in my
Powerbook.
(1) http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/11/274
(2) http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/10/11/111
None of them have been picked by the mm or any other aggregation, which
means they will be rediscovered by other people eventually... or
rendered useless by a refactoring of the code.
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Santiago Gala <sg...@hisitech.com>
High Sierra Technology, SLU
Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <ju...@erenkrantz.com>.
--On Wednesday, October 13, 2004 1:21 AM +0800 Niclas Hedhman
<ni...@hedhman.org> wrote:
> I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that hordes
> of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will dust of
> the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because *most*
> people *want* it to work.
Baloney. Code review is *essential*. For httpd, we require *three* people to
sign off on any change before it gets merged into the stable branch. We take
our responsibility for providing stable software *extremely* seriously. We're
not about to deploy untested (and unreviewed) fixes to the general population.
It would not bode well on our personal reputations or of our software's.
Therefore, we're also extremely cautious about adding new committers.
Furthermore, for example, lots of people suggest patches to httpd. They think
their patch is right. But, more often then not, their patches are incorrect
because they aren't as familiar with the code as the committers are. If you
turned the httpd repository into a wiki-style free-for-all, it would be an
extreme uphill battle to keep the code clean because it would turn into
anarchy. The current committers won't be able to keep up and the code would
degenerate as everyone throws in what they think is right without having any
mandatory review process in place.
An ex post facto review process (CTR) isn't always acceptable for
production-grade software because the reality is that real people can't keep
up with a high volume! CTR works well only when you have a stable core of
people whom you trust - as httpd does for its unstable branch, but even then
we still use RTC for our stable branches because we want to be
as-certain-as-we-humans-can-be that our fixes are right before we merge them
into stable.
I believe the quality of the code base is in direct proportion to the effort
required to get commit bits and what it takes to get a change in. There are
projects here in ASF-land that don't care at all about actual users and are
willing to leave them in the lurch due to petty political battles. That's not
the spirit of open source I care about or want the ASF to support. -- justin
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Ben Hyde <bh...@pobox.com>.
On Oct 12, 2004, at 1:21 PM, Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> On Tuesday 12 October 2004 21:02, Ben Hyde wrote:
>
>> Projects that: fail to
>> welcome new comers; fail to bring in credible new contributors ...
>> well
>> they are just stupid. They will ultimately become dysfunctional and
>> implode.
>
> Question; Should Open Source be Open Participation?
>
> I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that
> hordes
> of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will
> dust of
> the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because
> *most*
> people *want* it to work.
The question is not a boolean. The question is how does open source
manage open participation? The short and therefore meaningless answer
is merit.
Open source should be open participation, and of course it shouldn't be
open to everybody.
All organizations have to mange what I call their cell wall, the
membrane around them. The membrane is used to manage quality and
enable coordinated activity. You can not survive without one. If the
membrane is too thick then you stagnate, starve, etc.
Here are two things I've written before about his:
<http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2004/01/demand-for-features/>
and
<http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2004/10/hording-and-exploiting/>
- ben
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by "Gregor J. Rothfuss" <gr...@apache.org>.
Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> Question; Should Open Source be Open Participation?
>
> I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that hordes
> of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will dust of
> the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because *most*
> people *want* it to work.
i wrote about some of the reasons behind gated communities, and possible
ways to address some of their issues, here:
http://www.advogato.org/article/657.html
might be tangentially interesting to the current discussion.
also, with floss turning into a fashionable research area, there is a
pile of papers that look into reputation etc:
http://mit.oscom.org/search/lucene?queryString=reputation
http://mit.oscom.org/search/lucene?queryString=review
http://mit.oscom.org/search/lucene?queryString=httpd
-gregor
--
Gregor J. Rothfuss
Wyona Inc. - Open Source Content Management - Apache Lenya
http://wyona.com http://lenya.apache.org
gregor.rothfuss@wyona.com gregor@apache.org
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Tuesday 12 October 2004 21:02, Ben Hyde wrote:
> Projects that: fail to
> welcome new comers; fail to bring in credible new contributors ... well
> they are just stupid. They will ultimately become dysfunctional and
> implode.
Question; Should Open Source be Open Participation?
I am sure that the upper-tier of ASF would shiver at the thought that hordes
of people can gain direct access to the repositories. They/we will dust of
the same arguments of why Wiki won't work. But it does. Why? Because *most*
people *want* it to work.
Can it work on code? _I_ am absolutely certain, but I never expect that the
hard-earned ranks of the upper-tier in ASF to willingly relinguish the
'military style rankings' that makes up ASF and most other OSS projects.
Future will tell, but I am putting my money on Open Participation Software
(OPS) where everyone is welcome to join in, not barriers of entry and
"militarism" of promotions. ;o)
You heard it here first :o)
Cheers
Niclas
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Ben Hyde <bh...@pobox.com>.
On Oct 8, 2004, at 4:55 PM, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
> Use www.bugmenot.com if you need a password.
>
> Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to
> address the situation?
>
> Brian
> ... http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdm0411b/
yeah, i got comments.
The single most toxic thing that you can do to an open source project
is to circle the wagons and shun outsiders. Open source projects work
by achieving a balance between good people at the core and a horde of
talent on the outside. The balance is the key.
This article is just a series of cheap shots. Open source is elitist,
Open source is hoarding opportunities; in particular from women. Open
source is using it's power offensively against outsiders. It wraps
that all up by using the analogy of the man/woman dialectic.
First: All organizations have a core of people at the center; so you
can always accuse any organization of being a clique because they all
are. It's a cheap shot. It is much harder to judge if the
organization is too much or too little a clique. Anybody with a clue
about open source knows that we work very hard on that problem every
day. Or to put it another way your not working on that problem you
don't have a clue.
So the accusation of being too much of a clique is a very serious one.
Is the 'open' a lie? Is the absence of women in the statistics a sign
of some deep flaw? I doubt it. Why? Because any projects that shuns
outsiders is shooting it's self in the foot. Projects that: fail to
welcome new comers; fail to bring in credible new contributors ... well
they are just stupid. They will ultimately become dysfunctional and
implode.
That's not to say that it doesn't happen. If you circle the wagons and
ignore outsiders then you usually get a short burst of higher
productivity; and you get the fun of being all righteous and 3lite.
It's just not durable.
This is the accusation that open projects are hoarding some
opportunities. Well duh! All communities, all institutions, hoard
opportunities - for example we hoard commit rights. Healthy open
communities strive to hoard the absolute minimum number of
opportunities to assure they can stay coordinated and maintain some
level of quality. Everything else you struggle to giving away because
if you succeed you maximize the level of innovation.
Second: The article decides to play with fire. When ever a them/us
boundary appears - and they always appear around any community - you
can trot out all the old cliches. Old/young, black/white,
first-world/third-world, man/woman, rich/poor, big/little - take your
pick. In reasonable proportion this kind of reasoning by analogy can
be very enlightening. But that isn't the intent of the authors here.
They are not attempting to enlighten. They are attempting to polarize.
To drag the open source movement into the tar pit of one particular
them/us boundary.
The culture is full of very highly polarized them/us boundaries
rich/poor, man/woman, race, language - just to pick four. It is
delusional to pretend that the open source movement wouldn't suffer
from a high degree of statistical correlation with all of them.
Sometime the alignment is greater, sometime lesser - but it isn't our
job to fix those. It's our job to fix the them/us boundary around who
owns our particular region of the commons.
The right problem for us to worry about is that we need to always
strive to bring more people into the loop. For example we do a
terrible job of getting visual thinkers into the loop because our
entire coordination framework is based around text. For example our
anglo-saxon roots has created cultural conventions that make it hard
for huge regions of the planet to join the fun. For example we are
suffering some serious growth pains that are making the coordination
problems much more difficult but meanwhile we are afraid of the power
that might accrue to entity we charged with solving those coordination
problems.
The man/woman dialectic is just not useful as a way of tackling the
challenges of how to make an open project grow and remain functional.
It's the kind of analogy drives out intelligent thought [as Stefano
scratches his ass - indeed].
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <ju...@erenkrantz.com>.
[Completely off-topic, but this is community@ where nothing is ever on-topic.]
--On Friday, October 8, 2004 6:26 PM -0700 Yoav Shapira <yo...@apache.org>
wrote:
> But you know what, on a night like tonight with the Sox moving on in the
> playoffs, even an apparently bashing article like this doesn't bother me
> much! Have a good weekend everyone ;)
Oh, *what* a shot by Papi! Go Sox! BTW, I was able to see Games 1 and 2 here
in SoCal...Yay! And, I'll be in Boston late next week, but sadly, I don't
think I could finagle a ticket. But, it's all good now. =) -- justin
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by "David N. Welton" <da...@dedasys.com>.
Yoav Shapira <yo...@apache.org> writes:
> I don't think the article merits any sort of official response.
> It's interesting reading, but once I got to the (quote) "People
> often speak of the FLOSS �community,� but that phrase implies
> a degree of coherence that has never existed" (end quote) assertion,
> I realized the article had negligible credibility. How can you
> possibly assert that?
FSF and ASF. Some common points, but you wouldn't catch anyone
talking about how they want MS Office on an FSF list:-)
--
David N. Welton
Personal: http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
Apache Tcl: http://tcl.apache.org/
Free Software: http://www.dedasys.com/freesoftware/
Linux Incompatibility List: http://www.leenooks.com/
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Phil Steitz <ph...@steitz.com>.
Yoav Shapira wrote:
> Hi,
> I don't think the article merits any sort of official response. It's
> interesting reading, but once I got to the (quote) "People often speak of the
> FLOSS “community,” but that phrase implies a degree of coherence that has never
> existed" (end quote) assertion, I realized the article had negligible
> credibility. How can you possibly assert that? I see it proven false on a
> daily basis in every "FLOSS" community I belong to. I think most readers of SD
> Online are intelligent enough to conclude the same.
>
> I have two good counter-examples from the Tomcat community. Amy Roh has been a
> great, productive, creative, fun-to-work-with committer for a long time. We
> further have a number of woman who regularly post both questions of their own
> and answers to others' questions on the tomcat-user list, so while they're not
> Tomcat committers they are definitely part of the Tomcat community.
>
> But you know what, on a night like tonight with the Sox moving on in the
> playoffs, even an apparently bashing article like this doesn't bother me much!
> Have a good weekend everyone ;)
>
> Yoav
Its hard for me to argue with one of the most friendly folks @apache ;-)
but I actually think that the article makes some valid points. The stuff
about technical focus and women (on average) being less interested in
programming, etc.is nothing that we can really do anything about; but when
it comes to making people welcome and comfortable in the community, I
think we can always improve that. The "steep learning curve" and
occaisonal curt or unhelpful responses that people get when trying to get
involved can also be barriers. Could be these barriers disproportionately
exclude women. Regardless, the point is that by being more helpful and
making our projects and infrastructure more approachable, we can improve
the community.
Phil
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Re: Open Source, Cold Shoulder (fwd)
Posted by Yoav Shapira <yo...@apache.org>.
Hi,
I don't think the article merits any sort of official response. It's
interesting reading, but once I got to the (quote) "People often speak of the
FLOSS �community,� but that phrase implies a degree of coherence that has never
existed" (end quote) assertion, I realized the article had negligible
credibility. How can you possibly assert that? I see it proven false on a
daily basis in every "FLOSS" community I belong to. I think most readers of SD
Online are intelligent enough to conclude the same.
I have two good counter-examples from the Tomcat community. Amy Roh has been a
great, productive, creative, fun-to-work-with committer for a long time. We
further have a number of woman who regularly post both questions of their own
and answers to others' questions on the tomcat-user list, so while they're not
Tomcat committers they are definitely part of the Tomcat community.
But you know what, on a night like tonight with the Sox moving on in the
playoffs, even an apparently bashing article like this doesn't bother me much!
Have a good weekend everyone ;)
Yoav
--- Brian Behlendorf <br...@collab.net> wrote:
>
> Use www.bugmenot.com if you need a password.
>
> Comments? Is there anything the community thinks we could do to address
> the situation?
>
> Brian
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Fri, 8 Oct 2004 14:09:41 -0400
> From: Greg Wilson <gv...@cs.toronto.edu>
> To: brian@collab.net
> Subject: Open Source, Cold Shoulder
>
> Hello everyone. I'm very pleased to announce that an article Michelle
> Levesque and I wrote about why so few women get involved in open source
> computing, and what that reveals about open source's weaknesses, is now
> on-line at:
>
> http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/sdm0411b/
>
> You may have to register to view it, but registration is free.
>
> Thanks,
> Greg Wilson
>
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>
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